26 September 2011 2:34 PM

What's wrong with prisoners giving the money back to the taxpayer?

PRISONERS have a lot of rights. They seem to have a right to multichannel TV, officially, and, unofficially, a right to free use of mobile phones and a free market in drugs.If the European Court of Human Rights has its way convicted prisoners will shortly have a right to take part in elections. MPs who overwhelmingly opposed prisoner voting in the Commons will find themselves forced to canvass support in their local constituency nicks.But a right to work? I don’t remember from the old demonstration placards that that one included prisoners.

We discover today that there are 500 prisoners who are allowed to hold down jobs outside their jails, with the idea that this prepares them for release. It also means that they must be paid at least the national minimum wage, which comes to £237.20 for a prisoner over 21 working a 40-hour week before tax, national insurance, court order deductions and so on.Given that a prisoner doesn’t have to pay for accommodation, or food, or any of the other everyday expenses that his or her new work colleagues on the outside have to face, this is a pretty good deal.

It doesn’t seem so harsh to ask a prisoner to hand back 40 per cent of any earnings over £20, which is what Criminal Justice Minister Nick Herbert has asked them to do today.But it is too much for prison reform lobby groups, who oppose deductions from working prisoners wages. They also want to see well-paid work extended to tens of thousands of criminals guilty of very serious crime who are currently, according to Frances Crook of the Howard League for Penal Reform, ‘spending 20 years lying on their bunks in pyjamas.’It is, apparently, a ‘very good principle that prisoners should be working.’So here comes the prison right to work. The pressure is going to go on for at least 10,000 inmates who currently spend their time in prison kitchens and workshops engaged in tasks like cooking, cleaning, sewing, or light manufacturing to earn much more than the £10 a week they currently average.

The excuse will be the notion long peddled by the lobby groups that work prepares a prisoner for the outside world and a lag who comes out without cash has no alternative but to commit fresh crimes. The criminal justice establishment, from prison governors to Ministry of Justice officials and liberal-minded ministers, finds it easy to swallow that one.Prison authorities also love anything they can use to bribe inmates to keep quiet and cause no trouble. This impulse has led to a lot of prison comforts and contributes to the reduction of sentences.

No-one will mind that it makes life in prison better rewarded than life for many of the honest majority of the population. We are not supposed to punish prisoners, are we? Who cares that the right to work wheeled out in the name of reducing crime may in practice turn out to be an incentive to commit crime?

The 40 per cent deduction from prisoner wages, by the way, will be going to the charity Victim Support, where it will be used to ‘help victims recover from the trauma of crime and forcing criminals to take responsibility for the harm they caused.’

Ministers are suggesting it will go to help families of murder victims, providing a ‘dedicated caseworker, emotional support and practical help to cope with housing, benefits and funeral arrangements.’

Fine words have a habit of becoming a rather less elevated reality. There must be a chance of this money going to pay for the sort of counselling you get offered when you are burgled but the police have no intention of doing anything to catch the culprit.What’s wrong with just giving the money back to the taxpayer?

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